


the way it ought to be

by fishyspots



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: A Little Angst Sprinkle If You Will, Boys In Love, But Not Not Canon Compliant?, Episode: s05e13 The Hike, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Wedding Rings, a whisper of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29407323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishyspots/pseuds/fishyspots
Summary: Reasons Patrick would have four gold rings in a box in his laundry hamper: go,he types out on his phone, sending the message to Stevie before he can talk himself out of it. It’s gratifying how quickly the three dots that let him know Stevie won’t leave him alone to stew appear, then disappear. David narrows his eyes at the screen. Something’s going on here.omg what,Stevie’s message reads when it finally comes through.You already knew then,he sends back.Or, David finds the rings a little earlier.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose
Comments: 30
Kudos: 228





	the way it ought to be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [schittyfic (sixtysevenlmpala)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixtysevenlmpala/gifts).



> I have many WIPs I need to finish, so naturally I have instead written this. In my defense, schittyfic's prompt was really, really good. Thanks a million to [middyblue](/users/daisyblaine/pseuds/middyblue/) for making this better!
> 
> Title is from Marry Me A Little, which is in turn from Company.

“Ow, fuck.” Add this to the list of reasons David hates being alone at Patrick’s apartment; when his boyfriend is here instead of picking up new product labels after an order miscommunication that David maintains is the website’s fault, David can just ask _him_ what happened to his bracelet. He was wearing it yesterday, so it’s got to be around here somewhere. He steps away from the nightstand he was examining—careful not to catch his hip against the corner of Patrick’s desk this time—and toward the closet, where the hamper Patrick tosses his sweaters into indiscriminately is tucked behind the neatly ordered hanging shirts.

Touching Patrick’s dirty clothes is a lot, but. The prospect of the unending teasing he would face from Patrick if this bracelet really is lost—not to mention the genuine disappointment it would cover—is enough to make him wrinkle his nose and submit to the scent of unwashed laundry.

He can’t be expected to look directly at the way Patrick stores his clothes, though. His hand quests blindly until it lands on something hard, which could be promising. It’s square, though. That’s not bracelet-shaped. David frowns preemptively at whatever Patrick’s lost in here. He was complaining a while back about where his cufflinks got to even though he never wears shirts that would require them, so if this discovery heads off more complaining about hypothetical pairings for his blue sport coat at the pass it’s a win. David likes to talk about Patrick and fashion, true, but his interest mostly lies with aspirational looks.

The box is not cufflinks. It’s—they’re. That’s four rings. They’re basically _his_ rings, but gold. If he’d wanted to buy himself rings in gold instead of silver, he would have years ago when he made these part of both his look and identity. Still. The gold is nice, for all that it’s incomprehensible.

Now that’s he’s looking closer, they really are his rings. That’s the same hammered-flat texture. The same specifications. He holds his right hand out next to the box, trying to make the two gears—these rings and the place he found them, tucked away like a secret—turn together in his mind.

It seems like there’s only one answer here, but he’s got the worst embarrassment he’s felt in a year—because he let himself be sure—that took place in this very apartment before Patrick moved in tempering his certainty. He’s done this before, taken multiple steps based off of something that seemed obvious, telling his sister Patrick wanted to move in together and then un-telling her afterward in the least desperate way he knew how. Despite all of his bluster, few things faze him after the time he went to the Blouse Barn with Roland, or the time he went to the Blouse Barn with Stevie, or the time Jocelyn asked him for fashion advice at the Blouse Barn. But that conversation with Alexis was...not his favorite.

He’s getting sidetracked.

_Reasons Patrick would have four gold rings in a box in his laundry hamper: go,_ he types out on his phone, sending the message to Stevie before he can talk himself out of it. It’s gratifying how quickly the three dots that let him know Stevie won’t leave him alone to stew appear, then disappear. David narrows his eyes at the screen. Something’s going on here.

_omg what,_ Stevie’s message reads when it finally comes through.

_You already knew then,_ he sends back. Preemptively frustrated with whatever her answer is going to be—definitely snarky, probably evasive—he lifts the phone to his ear to call her. “You already knew,” he accuses again when she picks up.

“Hello to you too,” Stevie says flatly. “Oh, me? I’m doing well. Your dad decided that we didn’t need to hire a plumber for the blocked sink but then remembered he had a meeting scheduled with Bob until ten minutes after the guest who’s staying there is going to check in. As you can imagine, I look great in these rubber gloves.”

“Are you still wearing them now? While you’re on the phone? Wait, no.” David waves a hand impatiently; Stevie can’t see him but he’s sure she knows the gesture has occurred. “Rings. What. Why do you know about them.” He pauses for breath. “Also, when.”

“What are rings?” Stevie sounds far away. David hopes she’s ridding herself of the probably diseased gloves. “If we’ve reached the point of you coming to me for fashion advice, things are pretty dire. Do you need me to show you where all the clothes you brought to town are? I know you haven’t been to the motel in a week, but I didn’t think—”

“Stevie.” David is well aware of how whiny his voice has gotten, but this is urgent. Patrick will be back in less than an hour and he has to be some semblance of normal—or whatever the version of himself that Patrick finds endearing and not worrisome—beforehand or they won’t watch a movie, and his food won’t taste right, and then he’ll walk home instead of staying over without ever learning why Patrick has rings that are all wrong for his stubby little fingers.

Anyway. Stevie needs to stop being a monster, is the point.

“He’s going to kill me,” Stevie mutters. “You can’t tell him I confirmed anything. Seriously. He was so excited to surprise you.”

They learned unequivocally that surprises are very much not David’s thing last week, but David shrugs his shoulders to loosen the tension. This sounds like…

“David.” Stevie says again. “You can’t tell him I told you.”

“You haven’t told me anything!” David closes the box holding the rings. Maybe he’ll be able to breathe better without the gold glinting at him, a tease and a joke that might still be meaner than he thinks Patrick capable of all at once until Stevie finishes a goddamn sentence.

“Do you really need me to tell you.” It’s not a question.

David takes a breath and looks at Schrödinger’s ring box. Not such an unknowable answer after all. “Okay.”

“Can I get back to my sink?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry I kept you from such a tempting and enjoyable pastime.” But it’s not the biting tone he’s using. He can’t quite get himself to muster it up.

“Congratulations,” Stevie says. Then she hangs up before he can deflect with a joke about how _he’s_ not the one who’s achieving dominion over pipes today, which is rude. He could use the distraction that lightening the mood would give him.

David gets the rings tucked back between—ew—Patrick’s baseball shirt and a frankly obscene amount of jeans in the same dark wash before his boyfriend, because they’re still boyfriends but wow that word might change soon and David doesn’t have the time or headspace to properly process this, returns with pizza from the good place that’s not even on the trip back from Thornbridge. Patrick went out of his way for it, even though he complained about all the driving before he left the hotel this afternoon.

David is not going to survive a lifetime of this kind of care.

He’s a mess for weeks after that while he waits for Patrick to ask. Patrick sits him down seriously a few days later only to ask him…to keep his mom busy while he and Stevie take secret dance lessons. Then he grabs David’s shoulders the next week and wonders aloud if David would mind making the drive to Heather’s farm alone while he goes to the bank. When Patrick asks him on a picnic, the question barely registers as having potential. They’ve been together long enough now that David has grown used to Patrick’s expression of care through action and Patrick has grown used to David’s vocal opposition to unnecessary outdoor time.

So it’s not until a few hours before that David thinks, maybe. He rifles through his sweaters for his eighth-best getting-proposed-to sweater. With the benefit of hindsight, he can admit he’s jumped the gun a few times in the last month or so.

His disappointment at the foot of a trail he’s heard Patrick wax poetic about and was content to leave to his outdoorsy partner’s sole experience isn’t just about the prospect of exercise, then; once he gets past the top ten engagement sweaters, they all start to blend together. And if he gets sweaty in this, it’ll be a whole thing.

Still, he’s not going to let slip that he knows yet. If he could keep it together at the pho place when Patrick dropped to the floor to pick up a receipt that had fluttered out of his pocket, he can make it through anything.

Plus, cheese at the end. That alone will make the day worthwhile.


End file.
